Former Venezuelan Attorney General In Costa Rica Says Maduro Pocketed Millions in Public Funds

Luisa Ortega in a press conference on Monday in San Jose, Costa Rica, held at the Ministerio Publico. Costa Rica’s Attorney General, Jorge Chavarria, is seated to her right.

In Costa Rica on Monday, Venezuela’s Former Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz said that she can prove that her country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, pocketed between US$8 million and US$10 million in public funds.

According to Ortega, to undertake the “corruption plot,” a Venezuelan company “named Contextus Comunicacion Corporativa was used as a front.”

“There are many officials compromised by the issue of corruption (involving Brazil’s) Odebrecht company, apart from President Nicolas Maduro, who removed from the treasury between $8-10 million in cash and paid that to an important firm,” said Ortega at a press conference from the Ministerio Publico in downtown San Jose.

The firm, Contextus Comunicacion Corporativa, she continued, is owned by Monika Ortigosa, the wife of Alejandro Escarra, who is the nephew of Hermann Escarra, a member of the Constituent National Assembly (ANC), whose members were recently elected and tasked by the Caracas government with rewriting the Constitution.

Luisa Ortega (right), on Monday at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, located in San Jose. In the photo are the head o the Court, Roberto F. Caldas (at the head of the table) and judges Elizabeth Odio Benito and Pablo Saavedra Alessandri, sitting across the table.

Luisa Ortega, pictured on Monday with Oscar Arias, the Nobel peace prize-winning former president, at his home in Rohrmoser

But Ortega, for security reasons, she said refused to reveal the details of her agenda, adding that she will not return to Venezuela because her life is in danger there. Ortega added that she will, however, will continue fighting from outside Venezuela to ensure that her homeland “returns to democracy and freedom.”

“In Venezuela, it’s not possible to see justice done and so I’m turning over evidence to different countries,” Ortega said.

She also said that powerful ANC member Diosdado Cabello is also involved in the Odebrecht scandal, but she did not reveal further details, although she did say that evidence of this fact was turned over to US and Brazilian prosecutors.Ortega was ousted by the ANC,

Ortega fled her country after the regime raided her home, accused of committing “immoral acts” and claims of her husband being part of an extortion plot allegedly run from within her office.